"The Church has made enormous mistakes and is working to remedy those but the Church in many places, certainly in Australia, has mucked things up, has let people down," he said.

Cardinal Pell, who is not accused of sexual abuse, denied knowing about paedophile priests who were active in the Ballarat diocese during his time there as a priest in the 1970s and 1980s.

Analysis: Phil Mercer, BBC News, Sydney

For the best part of four hours, Cardinal George Pell was in the global spotlight, and the intense scrutiny will continue for at least two more days.

Raking through memories stretching back decades, this was a forensic examination of what Australia's most prominent Catholic official did or didn't know about paedophile priests preying on the innocent in Ballarat in the 1970s and '80s.

Cardinal Pell has strenuously denied any wrongdoing, mostly handling the inquisition in the elegant surrounds of Rome's Hotel Quirinale calmly, although his patience appeared to wane as the night wore on.

He said child abuse perpetrated by members of the clergy in Australia was a "catastrophe", and that many victims had suffered in a "terrible way."

But was the Vatican's money man being truly conciliatory or evasive? Opinion will be split, and the days ahead promise to be emotional and contentious.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse is holding its second round of inquiries into child sex abuse that occurred in the city of Ballarat in Victoria state.

Cardinal Pell was a priest in Ballarat and lived in a seminary with a notorious paedophile priest, Gerald Ridsdale, in the early 1970s.

Ridsdale committed more than 130 offences against young boys while working as a chaplain at Ballarat's St Alipius school between the 1960s and the 1980s.

Even though Cardinal Pell is not facing criminal charges, detractors have questioned the extent of his knowledge of child abuse, and say it could make his Vatican position untenable.

Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption
Cardinal Pell faced the Royal Commission in Sydney two years ago